2021 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER — Complaint #2178512
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN filed February 19, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2178512 (ODI reference 11719094) concerns a 2021 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER and was filed on February 19, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 19, 2026. The vehicle had 60,347 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Pennsylvania based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same TOYOTA HIGHLANDER cohort independently describe similar power train failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2021 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2021 Toyota Highlander. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, there was an abnormal whining sound coming from the transmission. The contact was concerned about the sound and contacted a dealer. The vehicle was driven to the dealer and was diagnosed with transmission failure. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 60,347.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2178512 |
| ODI Number | 11719094 |
| Date Filed | February 19, 2026 |
| Failure Date | February 19, 2026 |
| VIN | 5TDGZRBH3MS |
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Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.